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Otto Miroslav
Otto Miroslav was High Exarch of The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox during the years 2934/2955 - 2992 Miroslav is remembered not only as of the leader of the Phantom Council but also the High Exarch which repealed the Blood Eagle laws and being the one who moved the selection of High Exarchs from the hands of the Emperox and into the hand of the Council of Exarchs. Most importantly, he is remembered as the High Exarch, who after trying to strongarm The Church of Humanity, Repentant into non-existence, started to use the policy of publicly ignoring the Repentants while finding more subtle ways to oppose them. History Otto Miroslav was a prominent member of the Siblings of the Seventh and, fatefully, was the first Sibling of the Seventh to infiltrate the Council of Exarchs following the purge of Ai Hou’s supporters in 2912, by being elected the Purist Exarch no less. Leveraging his insider knowledge to skillfully thwart attacks against the Siblings, he was eventually chosen as the leader of the Phantom Council upon its formation in 2934. Under his supervision, its agents would provide increasing assistance to the Council of Houses, predominantly by serving as spies, information brokers, and discrete diplomatic agents. Miroslav’s crowning achievement for the war effort was his handpicking and remote supervision of the elite diplomatic squad whose mediation would cause House Triangulum to turn against the Empress. On the home front, he was meanwhile able to influence the selection of new Exarchs to the Council of Exarchs so that by the time of the Blood Eagle’s fall a majority of its members were secretly Siblings. This meant that after the end of the Second Imperial Civil War he was easily able to brush any resistance aside and be proclaimed High Exarch. Using his unparalleled power in the wake of the Blood Eagle he set about reversing the most egregious reforms having been enacted during the previous 50 years, the empowered Inquisition being foremost among them. To safeguard High Church theology this was done discreetly so as to preserve the narrative of the Emperox being divine and infallible. In what would have been an inflammatory move, had it been publicly known, Miroslav would however not restrict the power of the Siblings granted by Ai Hou and expanded by himself anywhere close to its pre-war level. For the remainder of his reign as High Exarch, Miroslav would continue to work ably but controversially towards a theologically pure and strengthened High Church capable of standing up against future Emperoxs. Using the Blood Eagle’s demise as a warning example against interfering too greatly in High Church internal affairs, he moved the responsibility of selecting the High Exarch from the Emperox to the Council of Exarchs before The Masked One could ascend to the throne. To make this inflammatory policy palatable he declared that the Emperox would be able to deny the choice should it prove repugnant, knowing full well this power would never be used for fears of inviting parallels to the recently deposed Empress. As the Masked One’s reign began, ushering with it a period of mourning and rebuilding, Miroslav’s hardline policies would according to most modern analysts prove woefully out-of-touch with societal realities. This is perhaps most felt by the emergence and rapid growth of The Church of Humanity, Repentant. Founded in 2969, Miroslav deemed the movement dissonant with mainstream High Church theology and discarded conventional practice of patiently usurping heterodoxy by gradually co-opting and absorbing it. Instead, he would apply any kind of political pressure the strengthening High Church could muster to squash it into non-existence, only stopped from enacting full-blown violent and murderous suppression on the Council of Exarchs’ behest. After 15 fruitless years, Miroslav would finally accept the dismal failure of his policy to suppress the fledgeling church. As a result, he was forced to bow to the spirit of the times and finally institute the policy characterising High Church relations with The Church of Humanity, Repentant for the next 200 years: subtly opposing it while publicly denying its existence as an organised movement. Though this mark of shame on his legacy persists to this day, he is nevertheless remembered as a mostly good, if possibly too strict, High Exarch. Indeed, the debate still rages whether his proposed plan to violently crackdown upon The Church of Humanity Repentant, if fully implemented, would have resolved the issue or spelt doom for the High Church. Category:History Category:NPCs Category:The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox Members Category:The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox